"Two great forces are now in fierce but unresolved contention. The material revealed by Edward Snowden through The Guardian and The Washington Post is of a wholly different order from WikiLeaks and other recent whistle-blowing incidents," writes Simon Jenkins. "It indicates not just that the modern state is gathering, storing and processing for its own ends electronic communication from around the world; far more serious, it reveals that this power has so corrupted those wielding it as to put them beyond effective democratic control." Jenkins was my boss in London in the 1970s and I greatly respect his judgement. Read it all